At This Rate, Don't Be Surprised If You See Steam Soon

Just a few hours ago we reported on the progress by those within the Phoronix community working to get the Steam client running as much as possible based upon Valve's Steam Linux binaries that are inconspicuously housed on their servers. By making some modifications to the Steam client binary and libraries, as of this morning they are up to the point of displaying the main Steam UI window. Just hours after that, the Steam Friends' UI is now being partially drawn along with other windows.

There's still some glaring problems (like no text being rendered), but this leaves little room to doubt that the Steam client (and subsequently the Source Engine) are being ported to Linux.

Drop by #phoronix on FreeNode IRC to check-in on or talk with these community members that have been thoroughly analyzing these files from Valve and working out ways to get the Steam client running off the premature binaries. There's also the already lengthy IRC log from today.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the web-site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience and being the largest web-site devoted to Linux hardware reviews, particularly for products relevant to Linux gamers and enthusiasts but also commonly reviewing servers/workstations and embedded Linux devices. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics hardware drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated testing software. He can be followed via Twitter and Google+ or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.